MCB 103 Epidemiology HW

In the Cholera outbreak (1831) , Snow theorized that the extreme diarrhea that characterized the disease might be the mechanism that spread the germs from one victim to another. Perhaps the fatal germs were lurking in the great volumes of colorless fluid that patients expelled. If just a few drops of that fluid contaminated a public water supply, the disease germs could be spread to countless new victims.  

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John Snow, born in 1813, was the son of a coalyard laborer in York, England. Growing up, Snow experienced unsanitary conditions and contamination in his hometown. Most of the streets were unsanitary and the river was contaminated by runoff water from market squares, cemeteries and sewage waste. In 1827, he was 14 he obtained a medical apprenticeship with William Hardcastle in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. n 1832, during his time as a surgeon-apothecary apprentice, he encountered a cholera epidemic for the first time in Killingworth, a coal-mining village.